This invention relates to packaging for photographic prints and transparencies by a photo finishing laboratory, and in particular to a photo finisher wallet or pouch.
Most non-professional photographers do not themselves process their exposed camera film or produce prints therefrom, but instead entrust these activities to a photo finishing laboratory. Typically, the customer delivers his exposed film to the photo finisher who in due course returns to the customer a package containing the finished photographic prints and their corresponding negatives.
The type of package delivered by the photo finisher is normally a paper envelope upon which the customer's name and processing/printing instructions are noted, and an inner print wallet or pouch containing a stack of the finished photographic prints and another stack of the corresponding negatives usually as film strips within a protective sleeve.
One popular type of photo finisher wallet or pouch is constructed of a flexible sheet material such as vinyl, which is foldable along a middle portion to form a folder having a front cover and a rear cover. Each cover is larger in each dimension than the corresponding dimensions of the photographic prints, and one of the covers includes a pocket on its inner surface into which the stack of prints may be inserted. The sleeved film strips may be inserted in the same pocket, or a separate pocket for accommodating the film strips may be on the inner surface of the other cover, or the film strip pocket may be situated upon the print pocket. In any case, each pocket is formed by a panel of flexible material affixed along three of its edges to a cover's inner surface, normally with the pocket's opening parallel to and directed toward the folder's middle portion.
Such photo finisher wallets may be rectangular, and are typically designed to accommodate as many as thirty-six prints having dimensions up to 4 inches by 6 inches. The wallet when unfolded may have overall dimensions of approximately 71/4 inches by 95/8 inches, the foldable middle portion may be an approximately one-half inch strip running along the former dimension, and each inside cover pocket opening extending along the same dimension or width. The width of each pocket, which is only slightly shorter than the cover's width, is sufficiently greater than the photographic prints' larger dimension or width to permit the pocket to conform to the stack thickness of the prints and the stacked film strips when inserted in their respective pockets. For example, the width of the print pocket may be approximately one inch greater than the longer dimension of the prints.
After the customer removes and reviews the prints from the photo finisher wallet, he may replace some or all of the prints in the wallet, and the wallet may then be filed for storing the prints and negatives and for subsequent removal and further review. In addition or alternatively, the customer may transfer some or all of the prints to a photographic print album, such as an album containing leaves having transparent pockets for displaying the prints, whereupon the photo finisher wallet may be filed for storing the negatives and certain of the untransferred prints or it may be discarded.